ROBERT STEELE: I’ve known RYP for over a decade, perhaps more. I first learned of him when CIA was handing out his book, World’s Most Dangerous Places, as the best available primer for case officers going into darkness without bodyguards or armor (which is what real case officers do, don’t get me started on the clowns surrounded by protein shakes with ink). This is a guy that can get kidnapped in the middle of the Darien Gap, and by the time his captors get him to the chief, the chief knows who he is, apologizes, and begs for an interview. A self-made man in every possible sense of the word, a brother in arms tried and true, RYP is one of the most educated, versatile, and accomplished people in the real world. It merits comment that it costs up to $2.1 million a year to keep one US soldier in the field with all the generals, aviation, logistics, and so on that one US soldier brings with them. $450K for one man, one hunt is a BARGAIN.

Swashbuckling journalist Robert Young Pelton is crowdfunding a mission to hunt down Joseph Kony. Is it genius or folly?

BY ELIAS GROLL

FOREIGN POLICY, OCTOBER 29, 2013

Robert Young Pelton thinks he can do what no one else has done: find the fugitive warlord Joseph Kony. And he wants your help in doing it.
Pelton, a journalist-cum-adventurer, has traveled the world tracking down and interviewing the world’s most dangerous men. He was in Grozny hanging out with Chechen rebels while the city was getting pounded by Russian forces. He linked up with Liberian rebels during their assault on Monrovia. And he tracked down and interviewed Francis Ona, the leader of a separatist movement on the island of Bougainville in the South Pacific.

Now he’s turning his attention to the most wanted man in Africa. Together with two filmmakers, Pelton is planning an expedition to central Africa, where he will attempt to track down Kony, the leader of the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA), in the jungle wilderness. Where activists and African troops — aided by U.S. Special Forces — have failed, Pelton believes he can succeed and find the man responsible for the kidnapping as many as 66,000 children and pressing them into service in his rag-tag army or as sex-slaves.

So is Pelton completely crazy? Or is he, maybe, just crazy enough to pull it off?

As some of you know, I like to find people who don’t want to be found. Since the mid 90’s I have located and connected with over two dozen terrorist, criminal, jihadi and drug groups. The alphabet list of people I have tracked down and lived with include the taliban, FARC, LURD, al Qaeda, BRA, GIA, MILF, ABB, AUC, HEK, Haqqani, Shining Path, ADF, Chechens along with various mafyia, gang and drug groups. My resume includes correctly identifying the location of bin Laden and Zawahiri in 2003. I have spent significant time tracking the exact location and condition of hundreds of kidnap victims in Somalia, Pakistan, Iraq, Afghanistan and Colombia. I don’t come to this task lightly

I am trying a new concept. Crowd-funding and crowd-sourcing a real search for a dangerous group. Your dollars supports an expedition led by myself along with professionals on the ground. Our task is to locate Joseph Kony along with understanding and communicating why Kony has not been found. Then we also need to communicate our efforts, discoveries and lessons learned in an open transparent way. Only then can criminals realize that there is no place left on earth to hide.

Phi Beta Iota:Crowd-funding is raising money from an infinite diversity of sources. Crowd-sourcing is aggregating information from an infinite variety of sources. They are different. They go well together. This is an example of public intelligence in the public interest funded by the public, of, by, and with the public.

We will go deeply into how $200 million spent by charities and U.S. tax dollars have not resulted in the locating or capture of Kony . Our goal is not to critique but to enlighten our followers so that we can apply this model to other expeditions.

Robert Young Pelton is one of just two speakers demanded by the international audience attending the annual conference on National Security & National Competitiveness: Open Source Solutions. The other was Stephen E. Arnold. RYP is the single most sensible, qualified, courageous, and plain honest journalist we know, across the creative and investigative spectrum.

Robert Young Pelton spent years investigating counterterrorism mercenaries, so the last thing he expected was to be branded one himself.

Yet there he was on the front page of the New York Times on March 14, his color picture flanked by photos of legendary ex-CIA official Duane R. Clarridge and Michael D. Furlong, a Pentagon psychological warfare official.

I am happy to report that the New York Times has done the right thing and corrected their depiction of me in their recent series of articles about Afghanistan and “rogue” contractors. Although I have no personal or ethical problem with DoD contractors, information operations, intelligence activity covert operations or any other programs funded by the Department of Defense to protect our citizens here and overseas. I was not a DoD contractor nor was my company or were my employees involved in any spying, clandestine or illegal activity.

I do have a problem with the illegal use of contractors for espionage, breaking laws or stepping across clearly identified moral boundaries in the use of journalists. But I did not make these allegations, the source for the current activity (almost half a year after we were told the DoD would not be a subscriber) is a leaked memo and DoD insiders. Not my company.